We picked up Tara at the Streatham Common station, after she had some measure of difficulty in traveling (Sundays are train maintenance days). We dropped her luggage off at the Mumford flat, and by then we didn't have much time to do anything. Nevertheless Tara and I tried to get up to Camden Market, but we only had less than an hour to walk around because we had to meet John and Susan at South Kensington station at 6:00 or so. We met up with them and proceeded to dinner and a show at the Troubadour, one of London's oldest music venues. Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix used to play there, and that night we were there to see the great Michael Manring. The openers were two other bass players, John Lester and Steve Lawson. Lester sang original tunes accompanied only by his upright bass - he was smooth, and had a great sense of melody to his lyrics. Lawson was a six-string bassist who augmented his tunes with loop devices and general spacey weirdness. Manring is a God. He opened with a Beatles medley before heading into his mind-bending solo bass compositions. At the end of the show they all played together amazingly well - three bassists all balancing out, everyone taking a different approach. They did Mile Davis's "All Blues" and Lester held down the groove while Lawson comped the chords and Manring played melody and texture. They all took good solos, trading off the rhythm duties as well. Magical stuff, even for non-bassists. Sadly I didn't take any pictures that day.
Day 4: Monday, March 22nd
For lunch we met another college chum, Angel (better known as the Offensive Mango), at Liecester Square. We ate Thai food and had coffee before beginning our quest to find an American Express office where Tara and I could cash in our Traveler's Checks. This took forever, sadly, which brings us to...
How Not To Travel Tip #2: For God's Sake, Man, Find Your American Express Location Before Dragging Your Friends Across Bloomsbury for an Hour.
But eventually we found one at Russell Square, and then got on to proper sight-seeing at the London Eye, on the south bank of the Thames:
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| The London Eye is basically an enormous Ferris Wheel with dozens of egg-shaped cars that fit a dozen people or so. Inside it, you can get a 360 degree view for miles around. |
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| With that done, we tried to get to Portobello Road market before it closed up, but we were too late. So we moved on toward King's Cross station on our way to the home of Jan Cyrka. Jan is a fabulous guitarist and musician for whom I operate a website. He's not known in the States, but he has 3 albums of melodic and eccentric guitar whizbang that put him in league with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai (in fact he's quite chummy with Satriani). These days he focuses mainly on commercial production music - in fact you've heard his work many many times, you just don't know it. His stuff can be found under TV commercials, radio spots, an incidental music. Even on soundtracks to movies like High Fidelity. Anyway, at King's Cross (or King's X as you might see it on a map) we stopped off at the platform to Hogwart's, #9 3/4. |
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| Jan took us out for a feast of Indian food, and back to his place for tea and general goofing-off. We also played with his cat, who is actually much more friendly than the pictures would have you believe. |
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| And because I'm a big guitar geek, I took pictures of his Kramer Nightswans, which he painted himself back in his guitar god days. |
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